The prior art has seen many disclosures of hub assemblies for interconnecting the struts or rib members of tents frames. These hubs have taken different forms, depending on the concept of the tent frame assembly, but the most pertinent type of hubs contain a mounting base or platform to which are secured a plurality of pivotal sockets which receive the ends of the respective struts. Representative of such hub construction are U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,766,932, 4,637,748 and 4,750,509.
The primary object of the improvement defined by the hubs of the present invention is to provide a device for interconnecting the struts of a collapsible tent frame in a manner that will sustain and carry them in bowed compression in the tent erected state and will allow the struts, for purposes of collapsing the tent frame, to be pivotally rotated about the center of the hub in the same direction as that of the force on the struts when they are under compression.
A second object of the invention is to provide a hub of the type described which can be alternated between a compression resisting erect tent frame condition and a folded collapsed frame condition with a simple rotation of one hub component with respect to another.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a hub having sockets for retaining the tent frame strut members which sockets are rotatable about all axes, including the longitudinal axis of the struts in order to relieve twisting or torsional forces in the struts.
Another object of the invention is to provide a hub construction which will fulfill the need in collapsible tent frames for a hub which is collapsible in the same direction as that of the forces which it is required to resist in the erect condition.